Patch 2.1 and How it Affects You

An analysis of the new patch

Patch 2.1 came, and the world didn’t turn on its edge. Instead, many casual Diablo players were left with largely the same experience (albeit marginally improved) while other dedicated obsessives were rewarded with great motivations to play even more regularly.

Now that everyone has had enough time to try out the changes, it’s time to take a closer look at which of the differences really matter. Herein are the successes and failures of the new Diablo:

The Grifts

In seriousness, they actually are better, they are an intensification of the same experience- faster, more frantic, a way to really push and test yourself, in addition to greater rewards.

How much they affect you

So, everyone plays differently. And it’s true that a few people play campaign mode over and over again, for some reason, or that some people play to earn achievements…but most people run bounties, collect keystones, and run rifts. If you skipped the last part grifts don’t affect you, but when you are done waiting until you’re strong enough, then why wouldn’t you try them out? It’s clearly where Blizzard wants you to go, and kind of the only experience with new content.

The Legendary Gems

Part improvement on gems, part something totally different. While your armor and weapon will continue to sport gems that just straight affect your stats in the standard way, your socketed jewelry will now be housing weird-ass crystals that have much more complicated and useful effects.

How much they affect you

At first not much, but eventually a lot. Mostly in that you are not going to find them at first because you are busy with other things, and don’t necessarily even have many eligible sockets. And also you’ll need to level them up to make them really appealing. But after a while you are going to be spending a lot of time as part of your endgame evolution hunting for and upgrading these gems.

The Seasons

I can rephrase that to instead say: if you remember the ladder, you already understand everything important about Seasons. If you don’t, and you still don’t understand seasons:

Picture a tiny Diablo universe separated from the rest of the game for the time being. You start fresh with none of your assets other than your accumulated knowledge and skill, and you have the length of the season to get as powerful as you can, proving your worth against the other people trying their best to do the most each season.

How much they affect you

On the one hand, Blizzard has come up with something that demands you play more often and for longer, to make sure you can get as far with your Seasonal character that you can and earn the most spoils. On the other hand, casual players don’t need to worry about seasons so much. This season’s rewards will be global next season, if you have the patience and a zen attitude then relax and wait.

The Leaderboards

Your question here is, “Why is this a separate heading from Seasons?” I like that you’re paying attention. Yes, the leaderboards are really just a Season user interface that let you know how well you’re doing. But the reason we want to give this addition extra attention is it marks a shift in where Diablo is going. The cultural focus on games you play doing the same thing repeatedly has a demand for an ability to know that you are doing the same thing repeatedly better or worse than other people, and until now the only really way to do that was in the mostly-ignored achievements or by bragging about your gear drops.

How much they affect you

The nice thing about Leaderboard-type improvements is that if you aren’t interested in them then they don’t matter to you at all, but if you like them they’re great. Most players can just continue on with what they were doing unaffected, but the people who were itching to really show off just how much higher-performing they are this season, how much better they are doing than the rest of the rabble, now those people have a great built-in feature to do that. It’s all upside-for-some, downside-for-no-one.

The Cesspools

By now you’re aware that this area was supposed to be in the expansion but wasn’t ready in time. Which is a shame, because they’re awesome. Despite the grossness of running around in a sewer, it’s a very cool area.

How much they affect you

Sadly, not that much. If they had just attached it to the rest of Westmarch’s sewers it would always be there (though there’d be little reason to go besides the occasional bounty.) But as it is now, the only way to ever access this area is through a rift, which are always random, so you are not likely to often get there. Given enough tries you’ll see it, so try and take in the lovely scenery while you’re there.

The Class changes

We mostly have the usual changes to classes…minor tweaks to the amount of damage this does, or replacing this skill rune with another. A few global changes to things like how dexterity works and how two-handed damage is calculated, but I daresay few will notice. Channeled spells got a major revamp, with some mechanical changes to when more damage is done, and an overall increase to damage and cost.

Blizzard continues to push for elemental diversification, but still hasn’t made it mandatory by increasing the resistance to certain elements in the higher difficulties as is feared. At this point there is no reason to believe they necessarily ever will, and may just want people experimenting with different builds for flavor, but if you suddenly see a whole bunch of non-elite mobs in Torment immune to Holy, that’s going to change things.

How much these changes affect you

Most of you, only a little. If you are happy with your build, you probably only have to adjust one power or two now. If you wanted to make a new build, you have a lot more options than before.

Certain individuals however will need drastic adjustments. Tempest Rush monks, for instance, will now find their damage is greatly increased (especially with Flurry) but resource costs have skyrocketed so you’ll need a lot of tweaking to stay viable.

What did they do to my Healing Globes?!

Blizzard went out of their way to nerf your personal preferred healing method, so now you have to actually use gear that has LPS or LoH. Suck it up.

How much it affects you

Not very, but it makes you very slightly more likely to die. If you’re one of those people whose survival plan relied heavily on collecting a whole lot of red globes, then you’ll have to adjust your plan accordingly. It’s not going to be hard. Other healing methods have been boosted. Really, if you want to complain about something, those changes to channeled spells seem like a bigger deal to me.

As for everything else that affects you

We’re less than a month into this upgrade, and there is still plenty to analyze. Plus the overall response to how successfully designed the Season system is and how much everyone likes it is still coming into focus. We’ll obviously have time to get into greater detail in the months to come, if there is anything key you feel we missed please feel free to let us know in the comments.

For now, just keep fighting those Greater Rift Guardians, whether you prefer to do it on the ladder or off.